psychology – Page 6 – Licensed Mental Health Counselor

Charity Johnson/Stevens: Why It’s So Hard For Us To Detect Con Artists

21 May 201421 May 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

All morning I have been reading about this 34-year-old woman named Charity Johnson, who has been pretending to be a 15-year-old teenager by the name of Charity Stevens. This woman, not only convinced someone who eventually became her guardian, that she was an orphan, homeless and had been abused by her recently deceased father, but she also enrolled in school as a 10th grader.Charity and Lincoln apparently met when they worked at McDonald’s together and Charity told her soon to be guardian, Tamica Lincoln, that she had no place to stay after both her parents had died. Feeling sorry for her, Lincoln took her in. She even brought Charity, who was actually four years older than her, clothes, did her hair and even attended parent teacher’s conferences.

Lincoln said that Charity even acted like a kid, doing her homework and getting good grades, but eventually her act was exposed when a group Charity tried to join that helps children in need, called Lincoln after they tried to do a background check on Charity.

Charities mugshot where she looks ever bit her real age and more. — Charitys mugshot where she looks every bit her real age and more.

They notified Ms. Lincoln about their questions who then contacted the manager at the McDonald’s she and Charity had worked at together. The manager looked in her file and told Lincoln that Charitys’ real name was Charity Johnson, not Stevens, and that her year of birth was 1979.Lincoln then notified the police and went straight to the school to notify them. Everyone was shocked including administrators, teachers and students, some who even cried after befriending who they thought was a 15-year-old orphan. Police confronted Charity Johnson, who gave them her false name, Charity Stevens. She was then arrested and charged with failure to identify/giving false, fictitious information and given a $500 bond.

My question is, what goes through the mind of someone who can pull off such an elaborate scheme? I wondered if she had some sort of mental problem, but after reading this story over and over, I have come to the conclusion that while she may have some personality deficits, she is simply just a con-artist.

Good con-artists know how to trick you so that you aren’t even suspecting that you are getting conned. Everything seems to be as it should and so our brains don’t pick up on the deceit as easily.
Psychology today puts it like this:

“The most natural answer is that sly or fraudulent, yet persuasive, salespeople signal to our brains that everything is as it should be. Their smooth behavior raises our confidence, thereby boosting our serotonin levels. The well-being chemical serotonin can turn off our critical sense and increase our feeling of content-so much so that our initial beliefs never are subjected to scrutiny in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior insula never gives us the warning sign that would make us step back and think… Our gray matter can distinguish honesty from dishonesty and alarming situations from unruffled ones but it cannot instinctively detect dishonesty and fraud cleverly disguised.”

For the most part, our brains aren’t created to catch con artists. It’s easier to recognize a manipulation on paper than it is when we are face to face with a person, which explains why so many of us get deceived so easily.

It’s best in this situations if we do not make quick decisions and take our time before jumping into something, especially something big or out of the ordinary. It gives us time to think and another chance for our brains to try to read through the deceit.

Con artists in general tend to have antisocial personalities. They do not care who they hurt, use or betray as long as they are getting what they want. They generally never feel sorry for what they are doing and usually never stop, even once they get caught. They will continue to either try to con their way out of the situation, or if they end up incarcerated, will just come up with another con when they get free.

This woman, Charity was getting free housing, free food, clothing, her hair and nails done, attention, affection and another opportunity to relive her teenage years bigger and better than before. She had a lot to gain and didn’t care who she hurt along her path.

I do not believe she is not mentally ill. She may have a mental deficit and even if she qualifies for antisocial personality disorder, it is are hard to treat which is why many of them are in our jail and prison systems. Hopefully some time in jail will help her get back to reality, but I doubt it. I imagine she will be running one scam or another sooner or later.

In the meantime, the people who have allowed her into their lives as a 15-year-old orphan, especially the children at the school she attended, are left trying to wrap their minds around this troubling event and I am much more concerned about how this will affect them. We know she had a best friend and friends at this school, but what if she also had a boyfriend? I shutter to even think about that.

Yesterday Does Not Define You

14 Apr 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

In the 8th or 9th grade I wasn’t the best student. At times my grades weren’t all that great and my behavior in school wasn’t either. I was never the type of student that was always in trouble, but I was always struggling to find my place amongst all the other teenagers who were just as lost as I was.

Often times I would find myself trying to do things to try to fit in. Things the popular kids were doing, such as not caring about grades and caring more about being respected and feared over being respected and respectful.

Sometimes I would do things that I didn’t understand, which I am sure many of us can attest too, especially when we were teenagers and our hormones were raging and our still developing brains were still trying to come together.

This would often lead to be being unhappy with myself for one reason or another. I would be unhappy with my grades which often barely straddled C’s and more closely D’s. I would find myself unhappy with the way I dealt with certain situations, rather it was bullying other people or getting bullied. Emotionally I was all over the place. Sometimes depressed, sometimes angry, but never truly happy for long.

It was during this time that I realized that every Monday I had a chance to start over. To almost be, or at least try to be, a totally different person than I was the week before. Maybe last week I got detention, was mean to one kid or allowed another kid to make me afraid to walk down the hall. Maybe the week before I wasn’t the best student, but every Monday gave me an opportunity to try to do better, to start over.

That was always such a relief, such a refreshing feeling, to know that I did not have to be the person that week that I was the week before. That I could start over fresh. And that’s how I started to get better, as a student and as a person, by starting over one week at a time, trying to do better each week and not letting the previous week define me.

It wasn’t until later in high school that I realized I could use that same technique, that same mental reset everyday. I didn’t have to wait until Monday. If I had a bad day today, I could start fresh tomorrow. Eventually, and I think I was a senior in high school or maybe in college when I realized every hour I could start over. If I had a bad morning, that didn’t mean the rest of my day had to go bad. If I had a bad moment even, I didn’t have to dwell on it and let it define my day.

That is one of the great things about life, that we can start over everyday, every moment if we really wanted to and learn from our mistakes. We don’t have to dwell on yesterday. We don’t have to let yesterday or 2 minutes ago define us. We can learn from those mistakes and move on.

By using that technique way back in high school, my grades and behavior improved. I became an overall better person, more in touch with myself and not depending so much on others, or the mistakes of yesterday to define me. I still use that technique today, albeit, sometimes as an adult it is harder to remember and actually do, but when I do it, it is just as refreshing to know that I don’t have to stay stuck in the past.

We are not our past and yesterday does not define us. Too many people get mentally and emotionally stuck because they let their past define who they are and they don’t realize that they can break out of that rut by simply trying to do better, to do something different, to have a different attitude or to try to take on a different perspective.

Sometimes that is easier said than done, but once you learn how to “reset” your life, it’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself, each and every moment.

Popular Psychology

Social-Emotional Development in Children Zero to Five: Part 1

16 Mar 201416 Mar 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC3 Comments

Over the next few weeks, I will be covering some information on social-emotional development and mental health for children 0 to 5 years of age. The reason for this is not only because I have my own seven month old son, but because of my new position as a children therapist.

In the last month or so in my new position, I have come across a handful of patients aged 2 to 4 and have had some difficulty trying to figure out the best way to treat them. It’s one thing to work with children, it’s another thing to work with the smallest of children who generally have no idea what they are doing and why they are doing it and their parents have already given up on them.

I’ve seen parents with 2 year old children, reporting signs of hyperactivity, inattention, defiance, aggression, you name it. They insisted that their child was different then all other children, out of control and demanded medication. And I’ve seen these kids, 2 to 5 year old kids who definitely were expressing signs and symptoms not typical of the average child.

In many of these cases, it ends up being the parent that needs the most help, either counseling themselves or parent skill training to learn how to deal with their children and curve unwanted behaviors. Still, in a few of these cases, it was obvious that there had been some type of trauma in the very early years of these kids lives. Trauma that remained unprocessed and so the child was dealing with the trauma in the best way they knew how, acting out.

Most of the time, finding out this information is not easy because the parents either don’t tell you the information or they didn’t even recognize that the traumatic event was actually traumatic for the child. Many parents believe that children 0 to 5 aren’t affected by certain events, especially younger children 0 to 2. In reality, even in utero, children can be affected by stressors their mom goes through.

For instance, when I talk to the moms of many of the children I work with who are 0 to 5, I find out that many of them were in abusive relationships during their pregnancy and afterwards. Many of them got abused regularly in front of their infants and young children, not thinking this would have an affect on them. Many of them yelled and screamed with their partners or other family members regularly with their child in their arms.

These things can have a really big affect on their child which is why I suspect, at least in part, is why their children now are “out of control”. They have experienced a lot of stuff, emotions, things that may not seem like trauma to us adults, but can be traumatic experiences to the child, and they don’t know what to do with it. They lack the ability to communicate like adults so they internalize it and express it the best way they know how which can look like disruptive behavior.

Another two year old I saw, his mom had no idea why he was so “wired” and screamed all the time. She pretty much said he was born that way, but I knew that wasn’t likely the case. After much probing and counseling, I eventually found out that this mom too had been in an abusive relationship throughout her whole pregnancy and afterwards. As a matter of fact, her baby was in a car seat when the father was driving and beating on her at the same time. They ended up getting into a bad car accident where the baby somehow ended up flying unto the floor and stuck under the passenger seat of the car for nearly half an hour until he was freed by firefighters. If that wasn’t traumatic enough, he ended up spending 3 months in the hospital recovering from his broken bones and internal injuries. Yet, this mother didn’t think that this had any affect on her 2 year old childs’ current behavior until I brought this to her attention.

Without going into the neuroscience behind it (at least not at the moment), the brain is always changing and young brains are changing and developing the most. Experiences are the one of the things that change the brain the most, causing the actual brain structure to change.

Everything we experience from sights, to sounds, the people we love, the emotions we feel, event the music we listen to and the books we read, affect the way our brain develops and this is especially true in children 0 to 5.In the next part of this series we will continue to explore behavior, parenting and early social and emotional development and ways parents can nurture social and emotional skills in children 0 to 5.

It’s Rarely About Us

9 Mar 20149 Mar 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

In life, we have enough to deal with with our own personal battles, the up and downs of everyday life and our own junk from our past and worries about our future. Still, most of us allow other people to dump on us, to put some of their battles, junk and worries into our already cluttered lives.

Most of the time we don’t even know this is happening and the people doing it to us are usually unaware as well. This all happens in our unconscious for the most part and is what is called displacement in psychology.

Displacement is an unconscious defense mechanism where someone transfers feelings of emotions, ideas or even desires unto other people or even objects. This usually happens in an effort to relieve anxiety, especially when it comes to things like aggression and sexual impulses.

Take for example, a wife who is sexually attracted to her boss and feels extreme guilt about it. She may come home and accuse her husband of being unfaithful, wanting to be with other women or even not finding her sexually desirable any more.

The wife will do this with so much emotional energy, that the husband will have no idea where these thoughts and feelings are coming from and will most likely do everything he can to assuage his wife and may even find himself stressed out although in all actuality, the situation has nothing to do with him.

The issue is not his, but he will make it is. He will take on all the emotional energy although it is not his in an effort to allay his wives feelings.

He may lose sleep about it and wonder what it is he is doing wrong.

We’ve all been in situations, arguments even where we knew on some level that it was not about us. I’ve been in situations where someone made me feel like I did something wrong and I did everything I could to rectify the situation, only to eventually find out it had nothing to do with me, meaning that although I was stressing and doing everything I could to make the person happy, there was really nothing I could do because it wasn’t really about me.

A good clue that it isn’t about you is when the level of emotion is out of proportion to the situation.

Lets say you accidentally drop and break a dish, but your partner goes berserk about it or you come home five minutes late and your spouse is raging out of control over your tardiness. Chances are, they are displacing their feelings, be it anger, anxiety or whatever.

Emotions can be considered energy in motion. When people have a build up of energy, they have to find a way of getting rid of it or it will affect them in other harmful ways (depression, self-harm through drugs, alcohol, reckless behavior).

Often the easiest and even safest way to get rid of that pent up energy is to direct it at the people they love simply because they know that chances are you aren’t going anywhere.

Your husband can curse you out and you may fight, but chances are you will still be there tomorrow. If he curses the person he really wants to curse out, for example, his boss, chances are he will not have a job tomorrow.

In psychology we are used to this and call it transference. Most clients eventually will transfer or displace feelings unto us, rather its issues they had with their mother, their father, their ex-husband, or whomever we start to “remind” them of.

As a male therapist, when I worked in a high school, I used to get a lot of teenage girls who would displace their anger and fear about their absent fathers towards me and in therapy, we work through this. It is part of my job, but in the real world, it is usually much more difficult and frustrating to deal with.

In some of the worst cases of displacement, it can become abuses. Lets say a husband is angry with his boss, but he can’t hit him, so he comes home and unconsciously picks a fight with his wife and hits her, displacing his anger. This may eventually become his way of “dealing with” his anger and the abuse cycle begins.

Sometimes this can have a chain reaction. Suppose the wife, now hurt and angry, displaces her anger unto their child by hitting him and the child then goes and hits the dog.

It can be a vicious, unhealthy cycle.

Displacement is an amazing psychological deception and some people will do it just as much consciously as unconsciously.

Some people will purposely displace their anger, worries, whatever unto others so that they can either attempt to avoid their own feelings or to distract the other person from the real problem.

When this type of displacement happens, it can be more abusive than simple unconscious defense mechanisms at work.

Take for example a wife who really is cheating and her husband gets suspicious. She gets scared and instead of confessing, she very angrily accuses him of being the one who is cheating. He may get so caught up in her strong emotional energy that he feels guilty for his suspicions and ends up being the one trying to treat her like a queen in an effort to show her that she is the only one for him, all the while she has successfully distracted him from the real problem at hand.

So the next time someone yells at you, gets angry really quick or displays any other emotion that seems out of proportion to the activating event, before you allow yourself to get caught up in all that emotion, take a few seconds and ask yourself, “Is this really about me?”. Sometimes that’s all it takes to avoid getting caught up in a battle of emotion that is not yours to fight and prevent yourself from unnecessary stress.

Popular Psychology

Six Things Therapists Don’t Want You to Know

19 Feb 201419 Feb 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC9 Comments

As therapists, we want you to open up to us. To trust us enough to tell us things you may have never told anyone else. We want you to explore your deepest, darkest places and deal with things you may not even be aware that you were dealing with or avoiding. However, as therapist, there are some things that we keep from you and here is what I consider to be the top five.

1. “Sometimes You Bore Me.”

As therapists, we get paid to listen to other peoples problems and that may seem like an easy task, but it’s not. Sitting and listening to someone talk for 50 minutes can be mentally and emotionally draining, especially when the person talking is going on and on about something that is irrelevant to why they are actually in therapy. Sometimes it is hard to shut out our own internal chatter and (I feel guilty to admit this) it’s easy to start daydreaming or letting your mind wander instead of being attentive and present.

When I find this happening, it’s usually a clear sign to me that I need to redirect the client, or that whatever I am doing isn’t working and I need to try a different approach. Some clients however simply aren’t that interesting.

I remember running into a fellow therapist at the coffee machine saying she needed some extra caffeine because her next client was “a snoozer”. Fortunately, this is a rarity and not the norm, but if your therapist looks bored, it’s a good chance he or she is and it could be a clue to both of you that you aren’t really working on the real problem at hand, but dancing around it.

2. “You’re All Better, But I Want You To Keep Coming Back Because I Need Your Money.”

Therapist in private practice depend on their clients to make a living so, sometimes, even when therapy should come to an end, after the problems have been resolved, a therapist will keep rescheduling you to come back, even if you run out of things to talk about. They don’t want to let you go or to discharge you because that is taking money out of their pocket, so they will continue rescheduling you to come back as long as you or your insurance company continues to pay them.

Speaking of which, most insurance companies will only pay for a certain number of sessions so a therapist may want you to keep coming back until you’ve used up all your sessions and then, rather you are better or not, they may stop seeing you. That is unless of course you have the money to pay out of pocket, which can be costly. Most therapist charge anywhere from $75 to $200 an hour.

If you feel like your work is done with the therapist, but they continue rescheduling you to come back, it’s okay to bring this up to the therapist, to stop going to see the therapist or to get another one if you feel like your therapist is using you. A good therapist doesn’t want their client in therapy longer than necessary, even if discharging that client is going to take some money out of their pocket.

3. “Your Secrets Are Safe With Me… Sort Of.”

As therapist, we want you to feel safe talking to us and tell you that everything is confidential and we like to think that it is, but there are somethings that may not be confidential such as when someone talks about killing themselves, someone else, abuse, neglect, etc. Also, courts can demand to see our records in the event of a court case such as an employment dispute or divorce proceedings. As therapists, we generally fight to keep our records private and only release what we absolute must, but while we promise confidentiality, there are exceptions.

Also, therapist often consult with other therapists, but usually we keep names and irrelevant details out of the discussion. It’s not uncommon for therapists to discuss patients with friends and family even, but in those cases names and details are always kept out because violating confidentiality is against the law and a therapist can be sued if it’s proven that he or she violated their clients confidentiality.

4. ” I May Need More Help Than You Do.”

Therapists are human. Sometimes therapists have problems consciously and unconsciously that they may not be able to deal with on their own, yet they still show up to the office everyday to help others. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be. If your therapist is not in the right frame of mind and doesn’t know how to let his or her own problems go once face to face with a client, a litany of problems can occur.

Therapists aren’t supposed to give advice, but often we do and if your therapist is going through their own life situations, they may give you some very bad advice, not be present or make some very unhealthy decisions.

I’ve heard stories of therapists crying and confiding in their patients as if their patients were there own personal therapists, leaving the patient confused. I’ve also heard of therapist who were so cold and bitter while going through a divorce that they couldn’t be objective and empathetic when listening to their patients talk about their own relationships.

I’ve also known enough therapists who went into counseling and psychology (probably unconsciously) to help themselves and ended up being therapists who were just as neurotic, unstable and mentally unhealthy as many of the patients they were supposed to be helping.

This is where issues come into play like the therapist who slept with his or her patient, or had some other unhealthy, inappropriate dual relationship with a patient like having a patient temporarily live with them or being overly and unprofessionally involved with a client.

It is often advised that therapists have their own supervisors or therapists to talk to so that they can keep their personal and professional lives separate. Fortunately, most of the people I knew would make bad therapist ended up going into other fields.

5. “You Will Get A Diagnosis Rather You Deserve One Or Not”

Unfortunately, in this day and age of managed healthcare, everyone that has insurance has to get a diagnosis in order for the therapist to get paid. Sometimes this is easy because the patient obviously fits a certain diagnosis like depression or anxiety, but sometimes it’s not so obvious.

For example, when a patient is just dealing with typical life stressors that don’t meet criteria for a mental health diagnosis, the therapist will have to make a diagnosis fit if he or she wants to get paid.

Sometimes therapist will go for a “soft” diagnosis, like adjustment disorders, but some insurance companies won’t even pay for a “soft” diagnosis, so an adjustment disorder with depressed mood may be unnecessarily upgraded to major depressive disorder, single episode. Your therapist may never tell you that you have been diagnosed, but you have been and at some point, if you care, you should ask what your diagnosis is.

A major part of my job is to diagnosis clients and everyone that enters my door leaves with a diagnosis if they didn’t have one already. I am always surprised at the number of patients who are referred to me with a current diagnosis, but when I ask them if they’ve been diagnosed with anything they either say “no” or “I don’t know”. These people are walking around with a diagnosis and don’t even know it.

6. “This May Hurt”

Most therapists won’t tell you up front that therapy can be emotionally and mentally painful. Most of the time we go to therapy because we are dealing with or avoiding some type of mental pain and we as therapist want to help you find it, confront it and deal with it. It can be pain that you know, like a recent divorce, or pain that you didn’t even realize was there, like how much you miss your dad that abandoned you when you were 3 and you haven’t thought of in over 10 years.

You may also come to some conclusions while you are in therapy, conclusions that may be difficult like ending a relationship, telling your mother how you really feel about the way she raised you or learning to say no to people you’ve always said yes to. A good therapist will be there with you and walk you through that pain, but most won’t tell you upfront how much this may hurt, otherwise, you might not go through with it.

Most therapists are good people who are in this field for the right reasons, not for the money (which isn’t great in the first place, but can be made), the power (some therapist like having a “God Complex”) or any other selfish reasons. Still, like in every profession there are good therapist and bad therapist and knowing how to identify a bad therapist can not only save you time and money, it may keep you from coming out of therapy worst off than you started.

Popular Psychology

Childrens Therapist: Yep That’s Me!

14 Feb 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments

I like to share with my readers whenever anything changes or happens that I think is appropriate for you to know and recently I got a new job title, childrens therapist.

It’s funny how the universe works. Sometimes the more you try to avoid doing or dealing with something, the more you end up on a collision course to face it head on. That’s how I feel right now. I’ve been working in the field of counseling and psychology since 2006 and started off working with adults. In 2010 I started working with teenagers in an inner-city high school and absolutely loved it.

Around the same time I was offered an opportunity to work with younger kids, but cringed at the idea of doing therapy with kids who had trouble verbalizing and processing. Things such as play therapy were very foreign to me and when I started doing some in-home counseling I started seeing a few kids that were between the ages of 10 and 12. I quickly referred them out feeling both uncomfortable and unprepared to work with kids that young.

Well recently I changed jobs. I was looking to work more with clients and wanted to work with adults, but ended up landing a job as a childrens therapist within the last two weeks. I already have 10 clients, ranging from the ages of 4 to 14. A four year old! Supposedly he has ADHD, and that may be the case, but I’ve met his parents and I am sure that their parenting skills aren’t the best so maybe with some parent training they’ll learn hoow to deal with him better and help shape him so that he doesn’t get stuck with the diagnosis of ADHD if it isn’t really appropriate.

I’m also being used in the capacity of a licensed evaluator to evaluate and diagnose kids who aren’t on my case load and have been giving the responsibilty of working with all the kids that are referred to the program through the department of juvenile justice.

It’s a bit overwhelming, challenging and exciting because there is so much I have to learn so that I can help these kids and their parents, especially the younger ones that traditional talk therapy doesn’t work with.

Earlier this week I was sitting with a 10 year old girl and we were doing pretty good. We were doing traditional talk therapy and she seemed to be doing fine with it and I remember thinking, “this isn’t so bad”, but about halfway through it she asked “can we color”. I was thrown off for a second, but then laughed to myself as I remembered she was a kid and told her “yes we can color”. And so we colored, and talked and it was pretty cool!

I have my first child who just turned 6 months over the weekend and here I am being thrown into the role of a childrens therapist. It’s like the universe had this whole thing set up and sometimes that’s just the way I think life works. At the same time, it’s forcing me to get out of my comfort zone, something I am always telling clients to do and I have so much I have to learn that I feel like a student again.

I have read this great book I have talked about before called The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories From a Child Psychiatrists’ Note Book by Bruce Perry. It is a book that talks about the horrific effects of childhood trauma, some intentional, and some unintentional in the form of neglect and ignorance.

As I revisit that book, it helps me put into focus the importance of the work I can do with these children. Yes, many of them have genetic predispositions to things like ADHD and mood disorders, but a lot of them are being raised by people and in environments that are causing them to respond a certain way.

It is my job if I can, to help correct this through therapy and parent education so that these kids have the best opportunity possible to turn into healthy children and eventually successful adults.

In the book, there is one story about a boy who was being raised mostly by a mother who had some type of mental disorder so while she took care of the child, he basically stayed alone in his crib without any interaction for 6 to 8 hours a day. He learned not to cry because no one was coming to help him. He grew up with unable to have feelings for other people and as an older teen, eventually murder two girls, raped their dead bodies and then stomped on them. Even in prison he showed no remorse and blamed the girls for not allowing him to do whatever he wanted to do. He didn’t even have any regrets other than getting caught.

Some of the kids I’ve seen, the parents have already written them off as bad apples and just want them put on medication so that they don’t have to deal with them. I can see that if these kids aren’t shown love, support, guidance and limitations, they will grow up to be criminals or in the very less, incapable of having healthy relationships with anyone.

Also, they have already gave me some great blog ideas. I’ve already unfortunately diagnosed some of them with ADHD, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and pervasive developmental disorder.

These may just be another stop on my journey to become the best overall therapist I can be, but I am going to cherish and learn from every moment and experience and do the absolute best I can to make a difference in each childs life. I’ll keep you guys posted along the way.

Know Yourself: Don’t Let Other People Define You

2 Feb 20142 Feb 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

Many times I talk about the importance of self-awareness, defining who you are, knowing who you are and just as importantly, knowing who you are not. People will always try to define you and put you in a box based on their own perceptions of reality, even when those perceptions are false or misconstrued.

People will try to define you based on obvious things such as race, gender, nationality, weight, the way you dress, the way you talk, how much money you make, education, etc. People will also try to define you based on their prejudices and past experiences.

For example, a man who grew up watching his mother bring men in and out of the house may not only define his mother as a whore, but may go on to infer that all women are whores and therefore treat every woman he comes in contact with as if she were a whore, even when she is not.

That means that this guy will never trust a woman, even if he is in the best relationship possible, he will always be looking for evidence that supports his theory that she is a whore, while almost always ignoring evidence that proves otherwise. He will always accuse her of cheating, of wanting to cheat, and will always be suspicious to the point that he will never allow himself to be happy in the relationship and will either leave after convincing himself that she is a whore or will push her away when she can’t take it any more. The sad part is, he’ll probably even then rationalize to himself that the reason she left was because she was a whore.

**On a side note: Numerous serial killers had “loose” mothers and ended up killing women that they perceived as sluts and whores (prostitutes and women they could pick up in bars) because they reminded them of their mother.***

People do this all the time and it’s largely unconcious and that is how stereotypes not only develop, but get maintained. They will assume that a particular group is lazy, or a particular sex is weak and even when they are faced with evidence that disproves this, they will still only see what they want to see.

Richard Sherman

I wasn’t going to get into the whole Richard Sherman conversation that has been going on around the country and in the media, simply because I thought it was pretty well covered. For those of you who don’t know, Richard Sherman is a professional football player for the Seattle Seahawks who in an interview two weeks ago after a big win, made some colorful statements that didn’t include any profanity, but left many in the national media and across the country, labeling him as a “thug”. Why? Because apparently after just one interview people felt like they knew Richard Sherman enough to define him as a thug. Besides, he kind of “fit the description” being that he is Black, has dreadlocks is full of testosterone and embodies everything mainstream America has defined as dangerous and “thuggish”.

This despite the fact that Richard Sherman has no criminal record, graduated from high school 2nd in his class with a 4.2 GPA and graduated from Stanford with a high GPA. The people who were calling him a thug don’t know all of this. All they know is the quick glimpse they got and felt like it was enough to define him. Even more sad is, that some of those who called him a thug who have since learned that he doesn’t qualify to be called a thug, will still consider him to be a thug because they want to place him in a box that matches their perceived reality of what and who a thug is.

Why all of this is important is because everyday we are being defined by people as broad as the media and society to as small as our coworkers and neighbors, right down to as intimate as our family and romantic partners. When you aren’t anchored in knowing who we are and who we are not, it’s easy to get confused and to even start playing into other peoples definitions and perceptions of who we are and from there, we can get lost and find it difficult to get back to “the real us”.

As adults this may seem unlikely, but it happens more often then you realize and usually without us knowing it right away. It’s even more dangerous when we talk about children who are still very early in the process of not only trying to definte themselves, but also trying to understand themselves.

For example, as a kid in elementary school I was told that boys weren’t as smart as girls. I was told that boys weren’t supposed to do good in school. So guess what? I didn’t do good in school, I did the bare minimum. I let that definition stick with me all the way until I was halfway through high school when I learned that it was “cool” for guys to be smart and then I had to unlearn that definition of myself. However, many boys get this same message passed on to them, especially boys of color in the inner-city and they never learn to redefine themselves and unlearn that message. The damage may be so detrimental that they may never learn to redefinte themselves.

I used to tell the inner-city teenagers I worked with that it was absolutely paramount that they define themselves and know themselves because if they didn’t, society would come up with a definition for them and if they didn’t know better, they would unwittingly settle into the role that was laid out for them. Society would see them as thugs, as whores, as future leeches of society and would treat them that way if they didn’t define themselves and stand strong in knowing who they are despite the pressures around them to be what other people want them to be.

Some teenage girls I worked with wanted to go to college, or graduate from high school, but no one else in their family did so they often weren’t supported, sometimes even encouraged to drop out so they could work or baby sit their mothers (or sisters, or cousins) kids. They were even told that they wouldn’t be anything because no one else in their family was. These girls had to remain strong and learn to define themselves and their reality, despite the pressures to succumb to everyone elses definition of who they were and who they were going to be.

People will tell you over and over again who they think you are. Some will say it blatantly, most will do it subjectively, but if you allow it, it will slowly and surely start to move you away from your center, from your core definition of who you are and move you further into someone elses perceived reality of what they think you are instead of your reality of who you really are.

I included a TEDs talk by Tony Porter called A Call To Men because he talks about how men are forced into a box, the same box that society has tried to force me and most men into. It is generally ten times easier to just go along with other peoples definition of who they think you are and should be then to actually go against the grain and stand strong in your self definiton.

Popular Psychology

Urban Outfitters Pulls “Depression” Shirt

17 Jan 201416 Jan 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment

Urban Outfitters came under fire after it began selling this shirt that has “depression” written all over it as if depression was something to be advertised. For Urban Outfitters to initially not see anything wrong with this (they have since pulled the shirt after public outcry), shows how much society has not only minimized mental illness, but even romanticized it. Granted, Depression is the name of the clothing company out of Singapore, but Urban Outfitters no doubt knew that they were pushing the envelope when they decided to sale the shirts in their stores.

This isn’t the first time urban Outfitters has come under fire for tasteless shirts. In 2010 they had a shirt that read “Eat Less” which seemed to make light of eating disorders, and another one that read “Syringe Shot Shooters” which addiction organizations protested.

The problem with shirts like this is that they minimize and make light of serious disorders and addictions. They also make it seem “cool” to have these issues.

You don’t know how many young girls I’ve worked with who are “cutters” and while most of them had some mental instability behind their self-mutilating behaviors, at least some of them did it for attention and because it made them seem complexed. The same is true with some of the depressed teens I worked with. Some of them were indeed truly depressed, but some of them carried around the bleakness and darkness like a badge of honor.

It also, in my opinion, takes some of the responsibility away from people who have these issues and then broadcast it with these types of shirts. The type of people who would wear these shirts aren’t saying “I’m depressed and I am fighting it with all my might”, but “I am depressed so excuse my darkness”.

People who truly suffer from these disorders and addictions don’t advertise it. Teens I see who seriously self-mutilate attempt to hide it, cutting in places you wouldn’t even think of and wearing excessive clothing to cover their scars. People I’ve worked with who suffer from eating disorders hate the disorder and the fact that they have to fight it everyday or risk dying or causing other serious medical issues to themselves. How are these people supposed to feel when their condition is being advertised and sold on a t-shirt? How is it supposed to make society take their condition seriously?

While these shirts may seem harmless, they are not. They are sending some hidden and unhidden messages to the public which can be dangerous. Shirts that say “Alcoholic”, “Crack Head” and “Suicidal” may seem harmless and even amusing to some, but for people who actually suffer, know or worse, have lost someone to those conditions, it is not funny.

Watch the documentary The Bridge which is a film about suicides committed by people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. You won’t see anyone who jumped to their death wearing a shirt advertising their pain or issues. Mental illness is nothing to glamorise. It is not something that can be fixed by giving someone a little more attention, but instead it takes hard work and dedication by both the person suffering from it and those that love them, including professional help and sometimes medication.

The best thing that I’ve seen come from this situation is the public outcry, for society to say that in the face of all the recent tragedies that have been linked to mental illness, we will not make light of it and forced Urban Outfitters to remove the shirts. Now only if Urban Outfitters and other companies that sale similar shirts would think about humanity more than profitability.

Popular Psychology

Relationship Beliefs: Destiny Belief Versus Growth Belief

7 Jan 2014by Torey C. Richards, LMHCLeave a Comment

When it comes to relationships, what we believe about relationships and how they should be plays a major role in how we perceive and behave in them.

We all have preexisting beliefs about how we think relationships should ideally form. Some of those ideals can be very rigid, to the point that they keep us from entering and appreciating otherwise great people because they do not fit into our idealized image.

For example, many people look for that “special someone”, but that “special someone” has to almost perfectly fit into their preexisting beliefs. Maybe he has to be exactly six feett, six inches tall, or she has to have perfect blonde hair or has never been intimate with anyone else.

Even the ideal about the way we meet that “special someone” can influence us.

In college, there were many people I knew who expected to meet their “ideal partner” in school and most didn’t. Many tried hard to make relationships that weren’t compatible work, simply because of their beliefs. Many others left college disappointed, thinking that they will never find true love if it didn’t happen the way they thought it should have, in college so many relationships they entered after school they did so half heartedly and didn’t make much effort in sustaining them, at least initially.

Most of these people subscribed to what is called a destiny belief when it comes to relationships, meaning that they thought people were either meant for each other or not. I too believe in this to some extent, but some people believe in this so much that they believe little to no work has to be done in a relationship because if it were destined to happen, then it would magically just work.

People who have been in successful long term relationships and marriages can tell you that successful relationships take work. They don’t just magically happen. It takes compromising, understanding, negotiating, letting go, determination, love and a host of other tools to make a relationship work.

Most people who understand this and are in happy, long term relationships believe more in a growth belief where relationships have to be cultivated and developed through mutual experiences, which may include conflict. They understand that not everything is always going to be perfect, but even then there are opportunities to communicate, learn and grow with their partner, in their relationship and within themselves.

People who believe more in the destiny belief generally go out of their way to make a good impression during the initial stages of a relationship, and are constantly on the look out for signs that this person may not be “the one” so that they can move on to someone else. This sensitivity to signs that a relationship may not work out very early on can be helpful, but it can also be very detrimental as they often quickly rule out potentially great partners over the smallest of perceived slights or flaws.

For instance, a woman whose ideal mate is always well-kempt, is in a new, promising relationship with someone who is “perfect” so far, notices one day that he has dirty finger nails, may see that as a sign that he is not the man for her and may end the relationship. They belief it is one “perfect” person out there for them and will reject any other partners that are even slightly flawed.

On the other hand, people who believe in growth belief place less emphasize on initial interactions and feelings, but want to develop understanding and closeness overtime to see how compatible they are with an individual. Even when faced with flaws, they will continue to see if they can live with those flaws as the relationship evolves through challenges, difficulties and resolutions.

For example, an argument might break up a couple if both of the individuals are heavily vested in destiny belief, while if both individuals are heavily vested in growth belief, the same argument can help them grow closer.

Both growth belief and destiny belief are viewed on a scale. People can be either high or low on that scale and I am not saying either belief is better. I for one used to be very high on the destiny belief scale, but as I have grown and had different experiences, I am much higher on the growth belief scale with a little destiny belief still in my heart.

I definitely believe in destiny and that some people and relationships are meant to be for one reason or another, but I also believe that without the willingness to work at and grow in a relationship, it most likely will not work. I do not go into a relationship thinking that this person is “perfect” and I don’t have to do anything to make our relationship successful. I go into a relationship thinking, this person seems worth investing my time and energy in (flaws and all)and if it’s destined, we will work out.

How do you feel when it comes to relationships? Are you more on the destiny side or the growth side, and if so, how high or low are you on those scales?

How Your Teen Gets In Their Own Way And How To Help Them Stop Sabatoging Themselves

11 Nov 2013by Torey C. Richards, LMHC5 Comments

Working with teenagers for as long as I have, I realize that many of them come with various challenges, from emotional and educational challenges to family issues that seem to drag them down. However, in a majority of the cases I’ve worked with, the teens themselves are usually the ones who are getting in their own way of success and happiness.

They often don’t see it that way and will blame their family, their friends, their environment, any and everything, but themselves and it will take many sessions before I am able to help them realize that they themselves are indeed the cause of their problems through self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors and thus are also the answer to their problems.

Most people who have been around adolescence know that many times they get in their own way and do things that are self-defeating or self-destructive. Self-defeating behaviors are behaviors that get in the way of constructive action while self-destructive behavior generally causes some type of harm to the person.

In early adolescence for example, teens often start focusing more on friends, fighting with their parents and other adults as they try to discover their own identity and may end up struggling in school in response to paying more attention to friends than to their grades.

During this time of conflict, (ages 9-13), it is common for certain self-injurious behaviors to start occurring, such as cutting as a way to deal with much of the psychological conflict and pain, especially with teenager girls while teenage boys may do things such as punching walls, getting into fights or destroying property even if it’s their own.

During mid adolescence, ages 13-15, friends are generally ultra important and so is being accepted by your peers. This is the age that teens are going to high school for the first time and can be overwhelmed by the pressure to fit in.

When a teenagers faces feelings of inadequacy about their self-image they may shy away from their peers and develop anxiety issues and/or depression or even self-destructive behaviors such as eating disorders and suicidal thoughts.

During late adolescence, ages 15-18, teenagers may engage in self-defeating behaviors that include more risk taking such as drugs, alcohol, and sex simply for the excitement of it and not considering the dangers that can happen.

This is the age that I worked with the most to either help them stop drinking or using drugs, or to help them with issues surrounding sex including pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and even rape.

As someone who has worked with teens for a long time, it can be very frustrating to see a young lady with endless potential, waste it because she wants to be liked by her friends or a boy or she doesn’t like herself. The same rings true for many of the young men I worked with who were more concerned about having a “tough guy” image, than actually doing something positive with their lives.

Parents indeed find this self-defeating and self-destructive behavior frustrating, but what can they do? Often times teenagers are too defensive to actually take and listen to advice from their parents so parents often would bring their children to me and then wonder what it was about me, or what did I say that got through to their teenager that they couldn’t and I would always tell them that they had to practice objective parenting.

They had to work on not telling their teenager what to do and think or what not to do or think, to not judge, but instead simply draw conclusion between their choices and the consequences of their choices in an empathetic and objective way, and then let their teen decide to either continue the behavior or to try something different.

This is often hard for parents to do because they would like to control their teenagers choices, but they can’t. They have to allow their teenager to make their own choices, however, parents can continuously attempt to put healthier and more constructive choices in front of their teenager for them to accept or not to accept.

The more healthy options you place in front of a teen, the more likely they are to accept at least some of them. As a therapist that is what I did. I would know that I wanted a teen to stop doing a particular self-destructive or self-defeating behavior, I would share my observations about what they are doing and what they are getting (or not getting) from their actions and then attempt to continuously give them multiple alternatives in hopes that they would try at least one.

For example, one teenage girl was obsessed with trying to get pregnant simply because she wanted a baby. I tried to help her see how having a baby would hinder many of her plans and goals for the future, but she didn’t really see that. I then gave her many other things she could be doing instead of trying to get pregnant and she finally decided to try one which is playing softball. She tried out for the team, made the team and two years later graduated from high school with a scholarship to play softball and never got pregnant.

While her mother thought I had worked some type of miracle (she was sure her daughter wouldn’t finish high school without getting pregnant) all I did was give her an opportunity to try something new and that ended up being self-affirming and she basically did the rest.

As a therapist, it is easy for me to be non-judgmental, to allow teenagers to continue making mistakes and learning from them while still giving them healthy alternatives until they finally realize that what they are doing isn’t working and are ready to try something different.

For parents, it’s hard for them to have that same amount of patience because the attachment they have with their teen makes it much more painful for them to witness their teenager continuously sabotage themselves by making poor choices. It’s very difficult for them to be as objective as I try to be.

Because this is very difficult for most parents to do, seeking help from a therapist is often the best solution, especially if the behavior is self-destructive such as cutting, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, etc.

A book I recommend for teenagers who are constantly self-sabotaging themselves is How to Get Out of Your Own Way by Tyrese Gibson.